Hi xaosflux, the July Ichthus sent out a duplicate. First I tested it here to a small test list (see User_talk:Lionelt/sandbox). It worked fine. I made a small edit to the newsletter, started the tool, previewed it, and then sent to the subscription. But it posted 2 copies to the distribution list. The log shows 2 send commands [1] both at the same timestamp but I'm certain that I only sent 1 newsletter. I don't know what happened. – Lionel(talk) 06:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

@Lionelt: the only time I've seen that type of behavior is if the Special:MassMessage page was refreshed/reloaded while you were in the middle of it, or just error an accidentally hitting send, then back, then send (thinking you hit preview). Also, if you have multiple tabs with the same message in them. Keep an eye on it carefully next time you run it. — xaosfluxTalk 11:26, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.

Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.

Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon () in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.

IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous

Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 23:25, 5 July 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [2]

The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [3]

When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [5]

Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [6]

Changes later this week

When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [7][8]

On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [9]

When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [10]

When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [12]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [13]

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [16]

You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [17]

Changes later this week

Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [18]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.

You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

This appears to be well within the threshold of automated/semiautomatic editing for requiring a bot-request given the amount of articles. Was there one do you know? Is there a reason it wouldn't require one? Because adding a template that makes no visible change to the output of an article (It didn't on any of the ones on my watchlist or some of the others I checked) on that many articles without a discussion seems odd. Only in death does duty end (talk) 02:18, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Only in death: I think a lot of that editors runs would be better under a bot account but I'm not ready to start that fight. — xaosfluxTalk 13:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

The reason I am querying it with yourself is to find out if this specific task should have had a bot-request, being a high-speed automated/semi-automated change to many articles, my reading of BOTPOL was that it should, but I am unsure. If its not, its annoying but not prohibited by policy. If it should be, its both annoying and prohibited by policy... Would it be better to ask at BAG? Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Only in death: first, note this ... BAG only has purview over actual bots, editors that are violating editing guidelines in general are a community/administrator matter. If this editor wants to file a BRFA, we would be happy to review it. — xaosfluxTalk 14:30, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

So to find out if a task *should* have required a bot request, I need to ask the community/administrators, rather than BAG who actually vet bot requests? That seems... backwards? Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

..."anyone can edit"... ; if the edits are bad: revert, if they are causing other problems (like flooding recent changes or watchlists due to speed and volume) first discuss with the editor. Someone adding a template to say 100 articles with AWB probably doesn't need a bot task, adding it to 10000+ probably does - in between is a grey area for sure and edits-per-interval are a major factor. How to proceed depends a lot on what you want the outcome to be. — xaosfluxTalk 16:20, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [19]

Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [20]

Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [21]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

Hi. Can you email (or copy to the testwiki) filters 925/926? Another spree got through today and I want to see if my ideas are any different from what's already being done. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

I just need to request you that please block user Mike V because that user is not editing as it is inactive. Mike V has not benn editing from December 2016 so that user needs to be blocked. Thank you. 171.79.23.108 (talk) 05:49, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

We don't block users for "being inactive" but we do remove their advanced permissions as was already done for this user. — xaosfluxTalk 14:06, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.

Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [28][29]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [30]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [31]

{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.

AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.

BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Sometime back, I asked, and I believe you replied, at VPT or somewhere about the idea of an edit filter that would trip when "{{User:" or "{{User talk:" was added to pages, to stop accidental transclusions of user and user talk pages. It happened again at ANI, fixed here. Would this filter be difficult to create/enable? Home Lander (talk) 23:00, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
is it only a problem in certain namespaces? The narrower the better (e.g. watching in (article) space is expensive). — xaosfluxTalk 00:26, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Particularly the WP namespace, where it would get flagged at AN/ANI, RPP, the help desk, and similar. Home Lander (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Home Lander: OK, I created a filter - it is in log only right now, feel free to keep an eye on edits hitting 928's log after now. — xaosfluxTalk 02:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes I was just watching that (actually managed to trip it already). Home Lander (talk) 02:36, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Home Lander: I had some overly greedy regex in there at first, it shouldn't be hitting on that stuff anymore. — xaosfluxTalk 02:37, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I figured it was picking up anything even without the ":". Home Lander (talk) 02:38, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────┘
It seems to be working. Note that "namespace" is misspelled in the filter description. Home Lander (talk) 02:41, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Should we also check talk namespaces, except user talk? I imagine this happens a lot on mainspace talk pages, in particular — MusikAnimaltalk 03:35, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Or frankly you might check user talk too. People do transclude parts of their userspace on their user page, but if all we're doing is showing a warning then this should be fine. Right? — MusikAnimaltalk 03:39, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: maybe - seems like this happens mostly to the more "technical" editors that are in a hurry. @Home Lander: have you been seeing this elsewhere recently? — xaosfluxTalk 03:41, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

And I think there may be plenty of legit use cases, so would not want to set this to disallow. — xaosfluxTalk 03:42, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

It's not happening all the time, just one of those occasional things that when it does happen, no one seems to know how to fix it (typically a trip to ANI or VPT is the result). I agree that the talk namespace would probably be a good target for it. Home Lander (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello Xaosflux, I need some help with a custom user template User:FlightTime/Uw-Consensus. I have it loaded in my custom warning section of Twinkle and used Twinkle to post it on a page of my old account here User talk:Mlpearc Public. As you can see the template is posting two section headers, how can I remove the auto posting of == August 2018 == ? I have == Please seek consensus == hard coded in the template. If you have a moment your input would be appreciated, Thanx - FlightTime(open channel) 13:42, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

@FlightTime: in general, Twinkle always make a "month" section to keep warning together so when you leave multiple messages, or multiple people leave message they can be grouped. Most twinkle message don't use section headers. I suggest you don't try to fight twinkle's process on this, but if you really want a section header use a lower level header like "===". — xaosfluxTalk 14:45, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, no wonder I couldn't figure what was triggering the header, I thought it was the template, but its Twinkle thats posting the first header. Thanx for your time and your input. Cheers, - FlightTime(open channel) 14:51, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Xaosflux, per Special:Diff/856641107, I have temporarily added the interface administrator user-right to your account. I'm sure the temporary part of that will change to permanent once we have a mechanism to agree it! WormTT(talk) 17:36, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [35]

Changes later this week

The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [36]

AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [37]

Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [38]

Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [39]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

I just happened to glance at Special:Statistics and noticed that there is a user category for Copyright violation bots which red links to WP:Copyviobot. Do you know if this is something new? -- Dolotta (talk) 18:31, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

@Dolotta: looks like this is part of phab:T199359 - it's not "live" yet, and I don't know much about it either (yet!). — xaosfluxTalk 18:43, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

I posted at WP:BOTN with pings to some related people. — xaosfluxTalk 18:52, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Xausflux. You are always amazingly great at finding the right page. Happy editing! -- Dolotta (talk) 19:02, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.

Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.

Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [40][41]

There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [42][43]

You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [44]

You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [48]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 September (calendar).

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

You reorganised {{Requests for permissions}} into Common & Uncommon a while back. Unless you have some strange criteria in mind I think Event Coordinator & Extended Confirmed need to be switched, as everyone (eventually) gets Extended Confirmed while needs to be applied for & a reason given. I'll go ahead & make the change but feel free to revert if I've got something wrong. Regards, Cabayi (talk) 16:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

@Cabayi: no big deal for me. It is unusual for editors to "request" extended confirmed, specifically because it is automatically assigned. I moved EVC up to encourage people to use it over the older "account creator" since it is now better suited for event management. — xaosfluxTalk 16:58, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Apologies that this has gotten bogged down in the details. Don’t know if you saw I’m ok w your ‘Change search ’. And I’m actually ok with ‘Revision search’ if the top box was labeled ‘Search for revision by tag’. Given that all seem to agree on cutting down the verbiage (3 words to 2) in the external tool labels and no one has objected to the reordering, how can we best move ahead from here? Also I have a minor related suggestion if you have the bandwidth for that. Humanengr (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

@Humanengr: hi, I haven't really been following up on this - if a consensus has been reached on the talk page, just reactivate the edit-request by changing "answered=yes" to "answered=no" and one of the patrolling admins will pick it up. Best regards, — xaosfluxTalk 21:31, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

It's been a while since I've been around these parts; I apologize for missing your message. It seems I've been marked as inactive in regard to several tools/permissions (rightfully so). I do intend to be more active in the near future—I've been missing Wikipedia! I noticed you removed my account creator right due to inactivity for over a year; out of curiosity, does inactivity only count edits and not log actions? The reason I ask is because I last worked at ACC on 29 April 2018.

@MJ94: I've restored your ACC flag, I do so many of these I don't think I even remembered sending you that message! Drop a note at WP:PERM/AWB if you still have use for AWB (just say you removed for 'inactivity' but are now back to avoid a long discussion and to get that bot off your back). To answer your question, your "logged actions" should count towards activity - but many of the reports/bots/etc that look for inactivity usually only check edits since they are much more common. Thanks for taking this in stride, please note nothing was meant as a judgement against you. If you need anything else, please let me know. — xaosfluxTalk 01:03, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [50]

Problems

Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [51]

Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [52]

<maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [53]

{{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [54]

When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [55]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 Septmber at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.

At this point, maybe I should go ahead and do some paragraph-level strikethroughs on some of both your and my comments in the two current sections; create a new section, etc., so folks can track it all better. Ok? Apologies for the confusion. Humanengr (talk) 18:09, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

As long as it is very clear what you want the final result to look like, that should be fine. — xaosfluxTalk 18:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

I see you approved Task 3 for User:Ahechtbot. This bot is making edits that are in violation of the bot policy. Why was it approved? Pinging bot owner @Ahecht: as well. This bot made an edit to move the bold ''' tags outside of a font tag. That's cosmetic at best. The change isn't visible to the reader.--v/r - TP 00:54, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind. I see that the WMF has implemented some dumb parser that breaks with old wiki syntax.--v/r - TP 00:57, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

@TParis: thanks for bringing up the concern, but yes it's part of the Special:LintErrors cleanup due to that parser change, on some pages the fixes may be less noticeable, on some they break formatting for the whole page - its a major pain! This is running with both 'bot' and 'minor' to try to minimize any disruption to watchlists, etc. For the most part, once these are done they shouldn't be repeated. Best regards, — xaosfluxTalk 04:03, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I'd also note that WP:COSMETICBOT does not consider fixing "invalid HTML such as unclosed tags, even if it does not affect browsers' display" to be a cosmetic change. --Ahecht (TALKPAGE) 05:21, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [56]

MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [57]

Problems

You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [58]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (calendar).

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (calendar).

Howdy Xaosflux. You were so helpful last month in getting my password restored, I thought maybe you could likewise help me with a new difficulty. I haven't uploaded images to WP in years, but yesterday I created a new stub article about a forgotten celebrity and came across a great image to go with it. To my horror, though, the metadata on the file page displays my real name - not sure how that happened, as I certainly didn't type it in. Can you or somebody quickly delete this image page? It's File:Frances_Robinson-Duff_ad_1922.jpg Textorus (talk) 17:27, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

@Textorus: this is done. If you don't mind random websites you could try verexif.com to strip the EXIF data fields before reuploading. — xaosfluxTalk 18:07, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you so much! And thanks for the verexif link too - I have bookmarked it and will try it sometime. Right now, I'm feeling a little gun-shy. I've been a very competent end-user of computers and the internet since 1977 - but in the last year or so it all seems to be turning into a hot digital mess I can't get my head around.Textorus (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

This is for you:

The Special Barnstar

To Xaosflux for help and kindness to an old wikigeezer. Textorus (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for granting my edit request, Xaosflux! I would have thanked you on that talk page; however, I thought it best to return the page to a redirect since it is used on many pages that way. Thanks again!Paine Ellsworthput'r there15:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Noticed on the same day I thanked you, you also notified Jackmcbarn of the consequences of inactivity. Don't suppose you have heard anything about ol' Jack, have you? Paine Ellsworthput'r there18:41, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: nope, Jack appears to have left the project, he is of course welcome back and upon return can just ask for this admin access back (if it's not too long away). — xaosfluxTalk 18:45, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Jack is one of the editors who has helped me for years, esp. with modules and templates. Looking over his contributions, I don't see anything to indicate why he would leave the project. If you concur, do you know of any way we can find out anything about his situation? Paine Ellsworthput'r there19:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?﻿action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [61][62]

Problems

New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [63][64]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.

The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.

Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.

Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.

There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [66]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect 00000000. Since you had some involvement with the 00000000 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:43, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [67]

Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [68]

Changes later this week

When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [69]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [70]

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (calendar).

The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

I reported a false positive that disallowed my edit of 18 October and see that there's still no response. In no way did my edit match the filter description "Multiple Obscenities", and I can't find a public filter matching the filter description. In the interest of "assume good faith", should I post to the article's talk page the edit I was attempting and explain what happened? Or might that trigger the same edit filter again?

If it helps to resolve whatever's at issue, I've pasted below the original text and the text edit I was attempting, which at least to my eyes is an improvement:

In 1984, British journalist and political commentator Polly Toynbee visited Ikeda at the invitation of the SGI. According to Peter Popham, writing about Tokyo architecture and culture, Ikeda "was hoping to tighten the public connection between himself and Polly Toynbee's famous grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, the prophet of the rise of the East."[163] Polly Toynbeee wrote that she had never met "anyone who exudes such an aura of absolute power as Mr. Ikeda" and others she had talked to “felt they had been drawn into endorsing [Ikeda]."[164][165] In The Guardian in May 1984, she wrote that she wished that her grandfather had not endorsed Choose Life: A Dialogue, his dialogue with Ikeda.[165]

(Italics = Struck out text from the Original Text Section , Bold = text added to improve the Original Text section above)
:In 1984, British journalist and political commentator [[Polly Toynbee]] visited Ikeda '''in Japan''' at ''the'' '''his''' invitation ''of the SGI'' '''conveyed by Dick Causton, SGI leader of the UK'''. According to Peter Popham, writing about Tokyo architecture and culture, ''Ikeda "was hoping to tighten the public connection between himself and Polly Toynbee's famous grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, the prophet of the rise of the East."<ref>Peter Popham, ''Tokyo: The City at the End of the World'' (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985; ISBN 4-7700-1226-8), p. 64.</ref>'' Polly ''Toynbeee'' '''Toynbee once''' wrote that she had never met "anyone who exudes such an aura of absolute power as Mr. Ikeda" ''and others she had talked to “felt they had been drawn into endorsing [Ikeda]."'' '''to describe an unsettling opulence with which she was received by him.'''<ref>''Toynbee, "Soka Gakkai and the Toynbee 'Endorsement'"; quoted in Popham, ''Tokyo'', '' '''{{cite book |last=Popham |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Tokyo: The City at the End of the World |location=Tokyo |publisher=Kodansha International |page=65 |isbn=4-7700-1226-8}}'''</ref>''<ref name="grandfather">{{cite news |title=The Value of a Grandfather Figure |work=The Guardian |author=Polly Toynbee |date=19 May 1984}}</ref>'' In The Guardian in May 1984, she wrote that '''others she had talked to about Ikeda "felt they had been drawn into endorsing him" and that''' she wished ''that'' her grandfather had not '''similarly''' endorsed Choose Life: A Dialogue, his dialogue with Ikeda.''<ref name="grandfather"/>'' '''<ref>{{cite news |title=The value of a grandfather figure |work=The Guardian |author=Polly Toynbee |date=19 May 1984}}</ref> In his response letter to ''The Guardian'', Dick Causton described her reflections as honest and understandable, given the "culture shock" of being hosted as a distinguished guest by Ikeda in a Japanese cultural setting and the "religious shock" of encountering Buddhists as ordinary people, all during a hectic 10-day schedule of interviews with prominent figures arranged by Soka Gakkai at her request.<ref>{{cite news| title=The double shock of Japanese culture |author=Dick Causton |work=The Guardian |date=28 May 1984}}</ref>'''

Hi @Tacktician:, I just left a note at the FP board. This is certainly a false positive but one that will be challenging to fix programmatically. That filter is somewhat complicated and private, but I suspect it hit on your addition of the phrase "dick" 3 three times. This is a false positive as it is a proper name as well as a common vandal term. That specific filter only looks at 'articles', so you can leave an edit request on the associated talk page (use the {{edit semi-protected}} template) and someone will process it for you. — xaosfluxTalk 17:04, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Just to follow up, the protection level on the Daisaku Ikeda page remains intact. I got the edit through by changing "Dick Causton" to "Richard Causton". Conveyed the same to DBigXrayᗙ , who responded to my request for edit on the Daisaku Ikeda Talk page.Tacktician (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Tacktician, thank you for the WP:Ping. Yes, I can now understand why you were unable to edit the said page. User:Xaosflux May I know how the "edit request" template will help Tacktician, because AFAIK even if I make the edit on behalf of him, it will still hit the edit filter. (Please note, I am not fully aware of how edit filters work, so please be kind if you find my question, silly ). --DBigXrayᗙ 18:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Videowiki123: the 'confirmed' flag is normally a temporary flag for very new accounts and gets replaced by the 'autoconfirmed' flag which is now on your account. You should be able to see you have this access now in Special:UserRights/Videowiki123. Are you having any current issues? — xaosfluxTalk 17:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I am getting an error saying "user is blocked from editing". Did not face this error before. So pretty sure this is because of removal of this username from "confirmed" list. However, IF you could switch this user back to "confirmed" temporarily, then I can try to see if this error still persists. That way, we can be 100 percent sure about whether the removal of "confirmed" user has caused this error. --Videowiki123 (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

The reason for the unexpected error message is due to a block of this user-account by a user (Vituzzu). This block has disabled the OAuth associated with this account, resulting in VideoWiki not working. Could you please "unblock" this user account? Is there a permanent way where this user account cannot get blocked by other users? This is important because VideoWiki will stop working if some user ends up blocking this user account in the future again. Please find the Commons link which shows the screenshot of the error message for your verification. The description in the Commons link provides more context.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Videowiki_OAuth_API_error.png
--Videowiki123 (talk) 07:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

This may be an autoblock on meta or commons, you will need to follow up with Vituzzu. — xaosfluxTalk 11:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@VideoWiki123: and any account may be blocked, if your edits don't follow community policies blocking could be used. — xaosfluxTalk 11:49, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Suppose I vote in an AFD discussion. After that, the discussion relisted. Can I vote for a second time after the relisting? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@Eli355: AfD's are discussions. You are welcome to continue to add to the discussion while it is open (or reopened), you may make 1 comment on it, you may make 10 comments on it. — xaosfluxTalk 00:56, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@Eli355: AfD is a venue where it is discussed if an article should be kept or deleted. You can comment, and present your arguments numerous times in the said discussion. You should see some previous AfDs for example. At the top of my head, you can see it in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hyperbolic asteroid. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:02, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

You can post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [71]

Problems

Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [72]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.

The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.

The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.

When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [76]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Could I ask you, as an administrator that is active with the WP:BRFA process, to please take a look at User:PrimeBOT? There are some major issues with their latest run and it concerns me that they are referencing a WP:BRFA from February that seems not to relate to the current task at hand. The script is severely broken and is dumping pages into error categories by the thousands. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 07:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: if you have already tried to contact the operator and are still in disagreement with the bot edits, please open a section at WP:BOTN for review. — xaosfluxTalk 13:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [77]

Problems

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [78][79][80]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [81]

Hallo Xaosflux, thank you for your suggestion. You wrote: ″...would you like us to import it to your personal sandbox for you to work on first?″ If I understood you right, did you ask me, if you could import to my personal sandbox. Yes of course. This would be very helpful for me. Please let me know, if I misunderstood you and I have to do the import by myself.
Thanks a lot and kind regards from GermanyGauthier W. de Reymaker (talk) 21:39, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 19:29, 18 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [82]

The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [83]

The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [84]

Hello, Xaosflux. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

Probably odds checker ring him odd ohh haha
Am in my was really don't so stop smokingo people who don't she will
"going back from work — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.70.188.95 (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for granting the rights of event coordinator. But I am not aware how to give permission to create multiple accounts from the same IP address. Do I need to write something at the talk page of that IP address? Kindly guide. Thank you very much. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 06:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. But I could not do it yesterday when I needed this information the most. But no problem. I will use it for the next time. Thanks a lot once again for sharing the information. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 07:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Can you please close this bot request. It looks completely abandoned and it has barely been filled in. The requester create a bot account but they haven't filled anything in so I think it is abandoned. Pkbwcgs (talk) 21:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pkbwcgs: I deleted it, it was empty and never submitted. — xaosfluxTalk 21:52, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [85]

Changes later this week

The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [86]

Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word__EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [87]

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warningUse of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [88]

Hey, Xaosflux, would you mind blocking my account as well as User:WK-test, my testing account, for a short time (5-10 minutes should do)? I'd like to test something. Writ Keeper⚇♔ 14:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 23:06, 27 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 16:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

@TheSandDoctor: Please note: I do not normally check my e-mail account for wikipedia, and prefer User talk: unless you have something private. The area you asked about is currently backlogged, but someone should address in a bit. — xaosfluxTalk 21:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I have been semi-active recently, and I have enough sources to add to content on Winona, Michigan, and a lot of other places in the region. Please allow me to add to the page, I can cite my sources~

Thanks~
The Copper Miner

@The Copper Miner: go right ahead, my update was only because you left the page completely blank. Happy editing, — xaosfluxTalk 18:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".

To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.

In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [89]

You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [91]

When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [92][93]

How should the requests from User:BrandonXLF be handled? He's been making requests that land at WP:SPER, but I don't think that most of the editors regularly responding there are too familiar with templates and modules and things. I foresee such requests sitting for a good long while if left there, so I've been shifting most of his requests over to WP:TPER when I see them. I understand that there's no technical requirement for a TE to be involved, but it doesn't really fit as a semi-protected request either. How should requests such as those at Template talk:Module link and Template talk:Jcon be handled with Brandon being restricted from editing in those namespaces, the editors at WP:SPER being largely uncomfortable assisting, and it not belonging at WP:TPER either? Thanks! ‑‑ElHef(Meep?) 15:38, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with either, but I figured more people would be looking at semi request? – BrandonXLF(t@lk) 15:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@ElHef and BrandonXLF: I've been pushing them away from TPROT queue if they don't require it. I see these mostly along the lines of conflict-of-interest edit requests, they need to be requested and someone may or may not get around to them. There is no deadline. I find a very important part of the protection policy is that legitimate requests against protected pages should be swiftly evaluated an executed when possible, in this case this is not a PP issue. Perhaps {{Request edit}} should be used instead if the SPROT queue is also getting flooded here. — xaosfluxTalk 16:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Right, these are editing restrictions - and pretty much anyone can handle them that is why I put in the SPROT queue as it contains immensely more editors than the wrongly selected template editors. Basically, please don't flood the TPOT queue, feel free to create a new category and request system to track edit requests by sanctioned editors, but I suspect it will get even less attention than the SPROT queue. Another possible solution is that you could ask (ping?) recent editors of templates to consider your suggestions. — xaosfluxTalk 17:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The issue isn't so much that the queue is getting flooded (the SPER queue is backlogged more than it's not, to be honest) - it's more an issue of expertise. Pretty much anyone could handle them, but the average TPER patroller is going to have a much better shot at having the technical expertise to understand the request than the average SPER patroller will. I can't speak for anyone else that looks at semi requests, but I know virtually nothing about template coding, so if a request like this goes anything beyond the simplest formatting fix or somesuch, I'm skipping it or sending it to the TPER queue. If the requests get to sit at SPER until someone with that expertise can handle it then I'm fine ignoring it, but these are an even worse fit at SPER than they are at TPER. ‑‑ElHef(Meep?) 17:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Since they are not actually protected, they don't really need protected edit requests at all though, do they? These are just suggestions for improvements being made on the talk pages right? @Primefac: you implemented this situation - what did you envision was going to be the go-forward process? — xaosfluxTalk 18:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The unblock restriction was put in place because Brandon was making dozens of edits without edit summaries to templates and frequently broke or unilaterally changed the template's function or purpose. However, there were some cases where he was actively (and productively) improving templates and modules, hence the allowance to continue to work in the sandboxes. There just simply isn't a good template to fit this situation, but I mostly agree with ElHef's logic above - if the request is a simple "please change X to Y because Z" and it's straight-forward, there' no need to get a template editor involved; on the other hand, a more technical SPER like at the Modules linked above probably should have a TE look at it. Primefac (talk) 17:55, 9 December 2018 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

Hi xaosflux, this is a courtesy message to let you know that i watch your talk page in order to fight vandalism (i do the same for other high profile users). Please let me know if you want me to remove you from my watchlist. Wish you a great rest of your day.---Wikaviani (talk)(contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (calendar).

New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [94][95]

When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [96]

Hi, sorry to bother you again, but I am under the impression that you know how Wikipedia works quite more well than I do. I am writing to you today to ask if it is acceptable to rewrite the page on the Copper Country strike of 1913–14~
I have amassed a wealth of knowledge and both primary and secondary sources on this topic over the years and it has particularly peaked my interest as I'm from the region, embedded in the culture, and it impacted my family quite a lot. I have made friends with a best-selling author on the topic, Steve Lehto, who can possibly even help oversee it if necessary.

Anyways, I await your response. Sorry for the long post on your talk page,

Hello @The Copper Miner: in general you should feel free to be bold in updating articles. Check out Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources to help ensure you are using good sources. While a complete rewrite can be done of any page, updating or adding sections at a time is usually has less resistance from other editors (who may take issue with you discarding all of "their work"). That being said, articles are suppose to change and constantly get better and sometimes that means replacing the whole thing! To not impact readers during major changes, you can use your personal sandbox to build the article without any editing conflicts then copy in all of the new material. Happy editing, — xaosfluxTalk 12:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, got hung up with RL things. Regarding this, was my guess right? I ask because, cascading issue aside, if we do want to deal with projectspace scripts en masse in advance of phab:T171563, VPT or AN might be a better venue than IANB. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: Oh sure, I was just wondering about the list you wanted to unprotected, if they are currently be used we don't want to open any holes. Do you have a list of the ones you want to unprotect? — xaosfluxTalk 15:19, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding cascading protection, sure. Having thought about it a bit more, I'm not sure what a good course is beyond nothing. There are a lot more WP-space scripts, nearly all ancient, with varying levels of protection (most full, some semi?) and not all cascaded. I had thought to remove cascading as pointless, but I suppose someone get a sysop to add a template and then they could insert a JS-y bit into the template? Not sure if that would load. Best thing might be to just delete the entire area, in advance of its deprecation, or lower everything to semi protection, since full protection is required for JS loading. The latter would flush out folks who relied on them. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:56, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: as far as removing the cascade option goes, I don't see any issue after review. As far as how to deal with these, if they are going to break, they won't be a security concern - they could still be 'template' that people could fork to userspace I suppose? — xaosfluxTalk 17:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

There's no timeline on the phab, so it's a quiet risk in that any sysop can use them to execute code as long as they're full protected. I'm leaning toward batch semi-protecting 'em, but will do some digging to see if any are used much. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 17:40, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: I'm a bit lost - you want to change all the cascading full prot scripts to semi prot to increase security? — xaosfluxTalk 18:10, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Code in projectspace can only be imported if it's full-protected; meta:Tech/News/2018/40 is misworded, but the email in the first footnote is correct (compare this fully-protected page to this unprotected page or this semi-protected page). Removing full protection removes the ability to importScript the page, whereas until phab:T171563 is resolved any sysop may edit those scripts. Sorry for the confusion, hopefully that's a little clearer? Unrelated to that, I thought to remove cascading protection as pointless. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: OK, gotcha and that was a bad technews statement for sure! Removing full protection will break these, so that's a bad idea to do without VPT/AN chat. Changing Full+Cascade to just Full seems fine, you should be able to just do it as housekeeping. — xaosfluxTalk 20:45, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Huge Amount of Paid Editing and Paid article creation is done in India.[edit]

Please Take a look at these articles most of the artcles are just "GRADE SCHOOLS" and we all know that grade schools are not notable at all.
The citation provided are not independent, and grades school are not notable these types of articles are created by such private school to attract students so they can increase their PROFITS, it's a very common practice in india. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G11 And also check who creates such advertisements he should be banned from editing Wikipedia there are more than 1000s of such non-notable paid advertisements in English Wikipedia.

You are my last hope for Independent Wikipedia in India. parents are forced to pay high fees in these schools as we all trust wikipedia, and these schools take advantage of it.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [97][98]

Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [99]

<ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [100]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (calendar).

The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.

tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [101]